They all started running down the stone kowtow steps.
They quickly found Tonghua, Huaihua, Yuhua, and Mothlet in the empty rooms that were used to sell odds and ends at the base of the kowtow steps. The rooms were full of empty bowls, chopsticks, and clothing that the wholers had left behind when they departed, and there was also a noxious odor of uneaten food. The girls had been left completely naked, each of them tied up in a different small room. Tonghua and Huaihua were each tied to a bed, while Yuhua and Mothlet were tied to a couple of chairs. Tonghua, Yuhua, and Mothlet had not only been beaten by the wholers, but because they were all tiny nins, their genitalia had been ripped open, and the area between their legs was covered in blood. In order to prevent them from crying out, their shirts and pants had been stuffed into their mouths. Mothlet’s mouth had been stuffed with her underwear. By the time the villagers found them, it was already light outside, the white fog having been replaced by clear light, and the villagers could clearly see that the girls’ tender bodies were all bruised, and that beneath the bruises the girls were as pale as death.
It occurred to everyone that Grandma Mao Zhi had not yet emerged from the memorial hall, so they all hurried back to the side room and saw that she had put on the burial outfit that she normally wore only while performing. The black silk shimmered and sparkled in the dark room. Grandma Mao Zhi was just sitting there, expressionless, as though she already knew what had happened outside the memorial hall.
The villagers said, “Auntie, the door is open.”
Grandma Mao Zhi replied, “I just want to die. Tell everyone to go back down the mountain and return home.”
The villagers said, “Last night the wholers ran away. Auntie, lead us back to Liven. You must lead us back.”
She said, “You should all quickly return home.”
The villagers said, “Huaihua and her nin sisters have all been violated.”
Grandma Mao Zhi stared in shock, then pondered for a moment and said, “That’s fine. This way, in the future, everyone in the village will know that wholers are to be feared. This way, it won’t occur to anyone to want to go out and perform again, and they’ll appreciate the advantages of remaining in Liven.”
When the sun came up, the mountain ridge became as hot as summer. Grandma Mao Zhi was wearing her burial clothes as she led the villagers, who were pulling, pushing, carrying, and dragging the luggage and bedrolls they had taken with them when they originally left the village of Liven. Together, they descended Spirit Mountain and headed back to Liven. In the end, it was in fact still winter, and the land outside the Balou mountains was covered in snow and ice. It was only in the mountains that the seasons had skipped over springtime and proceeded directly to summer. The trees were beginning to bud and put out new leaves, and even the grass on the pockmarked slope had turned green, transforming the entire slope into a verdant expanse.
The group of villagers headed down the mountain together. They saw many things along the way, including sighted wholers standing in the fields with black blindfolds over their eyes and tapping various objects, practicing the Acute-Listening technique, and people with their ears stuffed full of cotton or cornstalks, a board or piece of cardboard hanging next to their face, practicing the Firecracker-on-the-Ear technique. There were also women and girls sitting in a sunny area in front of a village, embroidering images on tree leaves or pieces of paper, together with some people in their forties or fifties wearing black burial clothes as they hoed the fields, carried manure, and spread fertilizer. As the villagers slowly walked through the mountain ridge, they saw many wholers wearing burial clothes. In one village, tens or even hundreds of villagers were gathered on a hillside hoeing wheat sprouts, all of them wearing black silk and satin burial clothes with large golden longevity, sacrifice, and libation characters embroidered on the back. They were laughing as they raised and lowered their hoes, and the entire mountainside was filled with the rustling of their silk clothes and the shimmering of their burial outfits in the sunlight.
After the residents of Liven passed this village, it was no longer merely people in their forties and fifties who wore burial clothes, but boys and girls, wearing them to school. Even nursing babies had golden longevity, sacrifice, and libation characters on their backs.
Throughout the land, these longevity, sacrifice, and libation characters could be found everywhere.
The entire land had become a world of longevity, sacrifice, and libation.
BOOK 13: FRUIT
CHAPTER 1: JUST BEFORE DUSK, CHIEF LIU RETURNS TO SHUANGHUAI
Just before dusk, Chief Liu returned to Shuanghuai.
Chief Liu and the delegation that had been assigned to travel to Russia to purchase Lenin’s corpse initially arrived at the county seat around noon, and from there Chief Liu instructed the delegation to get out of the car and return home for the moment. As for himself, he drove to Spirit Mountain to examine the Lenin Memorial Hall.
By the time Chief Liu arrived back at the county seat’s eastern gate, it was already almost dusk. He did not immediately proceed into the city, however, but rather told his driver to go home while he himself waited just outside the city. He stood by the side of the road, as if afraid of running into anyone. He wandered back and forth, hovering like a specter at the city gate.
He wanted to wait until the sky was completely dark before returning home.
This was a day at the beginning of the jimao Year of the Hare, 1999. Although it was the middle of winter, it was not very cold. There were a few blocks of ice on the sides of the river, but the water in the center was still flowing freely, producing a white belt that stretched in both directions. In the depths of the Balou mountains, meanwhile, it was as sweltering as in the middle of summer. The trees were all green, the plants were budding, and the Lenin Mausoleum was surrounded on all sides by lush, green vegetation.
But in the end, this was merely a peculiarity of the Balou mountain region, and in the outside world, circumstances and the climate both remained unchanged. Winter was still winter. The trees were all bare, and the mountainside was dark and ashen. In the fields, the dull and pale green wheat sprouts were still dormant, but seemed to have an oppressive air. The villages were all so quiet that they resembled ghost towns. There was a slight breeze from the north, and it blew like a knife under the eaves of the houses and through the streets and back alleys.
There was no sun.
The sky was gray, and some fog began to develop in the evening, though it would probably be more accurate to say that a thick layer of winter air spread out over the ground, over the face of the mountain, and throughout the deep gorge. In the depths of the region, people seemed lazy, as if they had not slept enough but still needed to get up and go about their day. When they looked up, they saw that the sun was hidden behind the clouds, like a corn pancake hidden inside a skillet.
Ordinarily, it would have been snowing at this time of year, but it had been a dry winter and therefore had merely been bitterly cold. Everyone throughout the land had a fever, and the sound of sneezing and coughing could be heard all night long. Cold medicine sold like grain during a famine.